The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American psychological thriller film that was written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The title refers to the butterfly effect, a popular hypothetical example of chaos theory which illustrates how small initial differences may lead to large unforeseen consequences over time.
Kutcher plays 20-year-old college student Evan Treborn, with Amy Smart as his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh Miller, William Lee Scott as her sadistic brother Tommy, and Elden Henson as their neighbor Lenny. Evan finds he has the ability to travel back in time to inhabit his former self (that is, his adult mind inhabits his younger body) and to change the present by changing his past behaviors. Having been the victim of several childhood traumas aggravated by stress-induced memory losses, he attempts to set things right for himself and his friends, but there are unintended consequences for all. The film draws heavily on flashbacks of the characters' lives at ages 7 and 13, and presents several alternate present-day outcomes as Evan attempts to change the past, before settling on a final outcome.
The film received a poor critical reception, but was nevertheless a commercial success, producing gross earnings of $96 million from a budget of $13 million. The film won the Pegasus Audience Award at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film at the Saturn Awards and Choice Movie: Thriller in the Teen Choice Awards.
Plot
Evan Treborn frequently suffers from blackouts, often at moments of high stress. As a young child (played by Logan Lerman) and adolescent (played by John Patrick Amedori), Evan suffered many severe sexual and psychological traumas. These traumas include being coerced to take part in child pornography by neighbor George Miller (Eric Stoltz) (father of Kayleigh and Tommy); being nearly strangled to death by his institutionalized, mentally estranged father, Jason Treborn (Callum Keith Rennie), who is then killed in front of him by guards; accidentally killing a mother and her infant daughter while playing with dynamite with his friends; and seeing his dog being burned alive by Tommy.
Seven years later, while entertaining a girl in his dorm room, he realizes that when he reads from his adolescent journals, he can travel back in time and is able to redo parts of his past. His time traveling episodes account for the frequent blackouts he experienced as a child. However, there are consequences to his revised choices of early actions that propagate forward in time to his present life. For example, editing his personal time-line leads to alternative futures in which he finds himself, variously, a college student in a fraternity, an inmate imprisoned for murdering Tommy, and an amputee. His efforts are driven by the desire to undo the most unpleasant events of his childhood which coincide with his mysterious blackouts, and as he continues to do this, he realizes that, even though his intentions are good, his actions have unforeseen consequences. Moreover, the assimilation of dozens of years' worth of new memories from the alternative timelines causes him brain damage and severe nosebleeds. Ultimately, he decides that his attempts to alter the past end up only harming those he cares about, and thus reaches the conclusion that the main cause of everyone's suffering in all the different timelines is himself.
Evan purposely travels back in time one final time to the day he first meets Kayleigh as a child. He intentionally upsets her so that she will choose to live with her mother, in a different neighborhood, instead of with her father when they divorce. She and her brother are never subjected to a destructive upbringing and go on to be successful in life, at the cost of Evan's friendship with her.
Eight years later in New York City, an adult Evan passes by Kayleigh on the street. Though a brief look of recognition passes over Kayleigh's face, it quickly fades as she walks away without talking to Evan.
Cast
- Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn
- John Patrick Amedori as Evan, age 13
- Logan Lerman as Evan, age 7
- Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller
- Irene Gorovaia as Kayleigh, age 13
- Sarah Widdows as Kayleigh, age 7
- Elden Henson as Lenny Kagan
- Kevin G. Schmidt as Lenny, age 13
- Jake Kaese as Lenny, age 7
- William Lee Scott as Tommy "Tom" Miller
- Jesse James as Tommy, age 14
- Cameron Bright as Tommy, age 8
- Melora Walters as Andrea Treborn
- Eric Stoltz as George Miller
- Ethan Suplee as Thumper
- Kevin Durand as Carlos
- Callum Keith Rennie as Jason Treborn
- Lorena Gale as Mrs. Boswell
- Nathaniel DeVeaux as Dr. Redfield
- Tara Wilson as Heidi
- Jesse Hutch as Spencer
- Jacqueline Stewart as Gwen
Reception
Critical reception
Critical reception for The Butterfly Effect was generally poor. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 33% approval rating, based on 168 reviews, with a rating average of 4.8 out of 10. The site's consensus reads: "The premise is intriguing, but it's placed in the service of an overwrought and tasteless thriller." On Metacritic, another review aggregator, it has a score of 30 out of 100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Roger Ebert wrote that he "enjoyed The Butterfly Effect, up to a point" and that the "plot provides a showcase for acting talent, since the actors have to play characters who go through wild swings." However, Ebert complained that the scientific notion of the butterfly effect is used inconsistently: Evan's changes should have wider reverberations. Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it a "metaphysical mess", criticizing the film's mechanics for being "fuzzy at best and just plain sloppy the rest of the time". Mike Clark of USA Today also gave the film a negative review, stating, "Normally, such a premise comes off as either intriguing or silly, but the morbid subplots (there's prison sex, too) prevent Effect from becoming the unintentional howler it might otherwise be." Additionally, Ty Burr of The Boston Globe went as far as saying, "whatever train-wreck pleasures you might locate here are spoiled by the vile acts the characters commit."
Some critics enjoyed the movie. Matt Soergel, of The Florida Times-Union, rated it 3 stars out of 4, writing, "The Butterfly Effect is preposterous, feverish, creepy and stars Ashton Kutcher in a dramatic role. It's a blast... a solidly entertaining B-movie. It's even quite funny at times..." The Miami Herald said, "The Butterfly Effect is better than you might expect despite its awkward, slow beginning, drawing you in gradually and paying off in surprisingly effective and bittersweet ways," and added that Kutcher is "appealing and believable... The Butterfly Effect sticks to its rules fairly well... overall the film is consistent in its flights of fancy." The Worcester Telegram & Gazette praised it as "a disturbing film" and "the first really interesting film of 2004," adding that Kutcher "carries it off":
Written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who co-wrote Final Destination 2, this is much more intelligent than their earlier film would suggest... The Butterfly Effect may be a little too unconventional to succeed with a mass audience, but filmgoers claiming they want 'something different' from Hollywood ought to take note.
Box office
Despite the critical failure, the film was a commercial success, earning $17,065,227 and claiming the #1 spot in its opening weekend. Against a $13 million budget, The Butterfly Effect grossed around $57,938,693 at the U.S. box office and $96,060,858 worldwide.
Awards and nominations
- 2004 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)
- Best Science Fiction Film - nominated
- 2004 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film
- Pegasus Audience Award â€" Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber - won
- 2004 Teen Choice Awards
- Choice Movie: Thriller - nominated
Home media
Release
The film was released on DVD as the Infinifilm edition on July 6, 2004. This edition was released with the theatrical cut (113 minutes) on one side and the director's cut (120 minutes) on the other. The DVD also includes two documentaries ("The Science and Psychology of the Chaos Theory" and "The History and Allure of Time Travel"), a trivia subtitle track, filmmaker commentary by directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, deleted and alternate scenes, and a short feature called "The Creative Process" among other things.
Alternate endings
The Butterfly Effect has four different endings that were shot for the film:
- The theatrical release ending shows Evan passing Kayleigh on the sidewalk, he sees her, and recognizes her, but keeps walking.
- The "happy ending" alternate ending shows Evan and Kayleigh stopping on the sidewalk when they cross paths. They introduce themselves and Evan asks her out for coffee.
- The "open-ended" alternate ending is similar to the one where Evan and Kayleigh pass each other on the sidewalk and keep walking, except this time Evan, after hesitating, turns and follows Kayleigh. This ending was utilized in the film's novelization, written by James Swallow and published by Black Flame.
- The "director's cut" alternate ending shows Evan turning on the home movies, only this time instead of watching a home movie at a neighborhood gathering, he's watching the video of his own birth. He travels back to when he is about to be born and commits suicide by strangling himself with his own umbilical cord. Therefore he was never there to change the timeline in the first place and this explains why Evan's mother had two still-born children before him.
Sequels
The Butterfly Effect 2 was released on DVD on October 10, 2006. It was directed by John R. Leonetti and was largely unrelated to the original film. It features a brief reference to the first film in the form of a newspaper headline referring to Evan's father, as well as using the same basic time travel mechanics.
The third installment in the series, The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations, was released by After Dark Films in 2009. This sequel follows the life of a young man who journeys back in time in order to solve the mystery surrounding his high school girlfriend's death. This film has no direct relation to the first two and uses different time travel mechanics.
Allusions
- Recognition of Ray Bradbury's influential story, "A Sound of Thunder", appears on a pennant reading "Bradbury" in Evan's dorm room.
See also
- List of films featuring time loops
References
External links
- Former official website (last valid Internet Archive copy, December 5, 2008)
- The Butterfly Effect at the Internet Movie Database
- The Butterfly Effect at AllMovie
- The Butterfly Effect at Box Office Mojo
- The Butterfly Effect at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Butterfly Effect at Metacritic
